Miles Pidgeon Documentary Project Evaluation

It goes without saying that every production has its share of ups and downs, and that is very much true
for our own documentary project, beginning in September and ending in December of 2021. Called
Life of a Vegan, the short documentary covers ten days in the life of Josh Head as he experiences for
the first time the vegan options offered by some of his favourite fast-food restaurants, however this
was not our initial intention. The focus on the fast-food aspect of the film was added very late in the
development of the project, in fact, the day before the final cut was to be produced. Similarly, a large
number of changes to the group’s original vision of the film, laid out explicitly in the treatment, had to
be made in response to both audience feedback, and along the way due to various issues and
challenges that we faced.
The initial plan for the narrative of our documentary was for Josh to experience the full extent
of the vegan lifestyle, with a final meaty meal or a ‘Last Supper’ before taking the plunge for two
weeks. However, the issues we faced eventually led to much of this not shining through in the rough
cut of Life of a Vegan, which we showed to a test audience. The apparent lack of a focus on anything
other than fast food was something that was picked up immediately by the viewers as a glaring issue:
The narrative did not present the life of a vegan because the footage that we ended up using simply
did not show that. Without a clear narrative relevant to the aims we laid out in the introduction of the
documentary, we could not call the film a success, not even a documentary at the very least (as the
Life of a Vegan had not been documented). This issue seems especially egregious in hindsight as it
may be very unlikely that vegans regularly eat fast food. Footage of the ‘Life’ part of being a vegan
was literally not in this cut of the film; therefore, we had to adapt our project to fit this new focus on
fast food and hastily write, record, and insert a voiceover to fill in the storytelling gaps that were left
in our film. We chose this route because it allowed us to keep the majority of what we already had in
the film without having to produce much new content or to make major, world-shifting changes to the
film. It also gave us context to bake into the going-to-places-and-eating-stuff narrative, as one viewer
described it. Certain members of our crew came together to ensure that this did not have a massive
impact on the workflow, nor the overall quality of the film as a whole and I believe it worked in our
favour and actually had a positive impact on the film.
The test audience also picked up on various other issues that required adjustments to be made.
For example, it was said that the milk-reviewing segment of the film was far too long and boring to
hold the viewers’ interest for the extended period of time it ran for. The solution was to break the
sequence up into its individual segments (1 milk tasted per segment) and spread them throughout the
film in order to not only break up the long and boring scene, but also to enforce the chapter-based
structure we had opted for throughout the project. Similar criticisms were imposed on the tier list
section which initially ran for twelve minutes. Nathan, Amy, and I made the executive decision to
remove the Greggs segment from this sequence because it was the least interesting, both visually and
in terms of what was discussed regarding the food. Finally, as with any project, various technical
issues were also highlighted, such as disparities/inconsistencies in colour balance and audio mixing,

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 Miles Pidgeon Documentary Project Evaluation

unfocused footage and editing errors (such as long gaps, abrupt transitions) and spelling and grammar
issues.
The film was not without its strengths, however. The use of B-Roll footage was picked up as
a strength, with viewers praising its placement and how smooth the transition felt with it, and how it
also broke up the monotony of our clean, clinical interviews and review sequences. We were lucky to
have so much footage to choose from, as we had been worried about halfway through filming that we
would be short on filler shots, however this turned out to be no problem at all (in fact, we had far too
much footage). The professional aesthetic we captured was also noted. The entire milk sequence is
something that I am very proud of, and I know Amy is too; this might have something to do with the
fact that we took most of the aesthetic, including lighting, camera placement and table setup into our
own hands to achieve the look we wanted, as well as directing the sequence between the two of us
also.
The issues we faced